Jaime Lyn Bauer (pt 1 of 2) ... In this exclusive, in-depth and at times emotional interview, iconic soap starJaime Lyn Bauer opens up to "Reimagine That!" host and Retroality.TV editor Chris Mann about her love for the late Jeanne Cooper, her experiences with TV's Katherine Chancellor behind-the-scenes at "The Young & the Restless" and in the play "Plaza Suite," and her "life lesson" in not having reached out to the ailing actress when receiving her phone number just weeks prior to her death earlier this month.

As Cooper's current co-stars gather to celebrate her life in a one-hour "Y&R" tribute airing on May 28, Jaime reveals that the TV legend was an intimate comrade, a mentor and a mother figure -- in spite of the well-documented personal travails, including alcoholism, that plagued Cooper's life off-camera during her first decade on the CBS daytime drama. (Listen at 20:44.)

"I loved Jeanne," Jaime Lyn says, choking back tears. "She was a very important person in my life. She saved me through some of my worst years. She befriended me, she mothered me. She was an incredible woman. And she was very troubled at that time as well, in her personal life. And we were good for each other. We hung out a lot. I even dated Corbin, her son, for a while, and she was graciously alright with it."

Joining "Y&R" in December 1973 -- a month after Jeanne premiered as the soap's grande dame -- Jaime Lyn quickly shot to fame as the show's original bad girl-turned-heroine, Lauralee "Lorie" Brooks." This character, named after series creator William Bell's daughter, soon became the half-hour soap's centerpiece. Jaime Lyn reveals how she developed the sexual, sophisticated and "bad-seed" character in part by observing men and women "play all these silly games" at the Playboy Mansion.

The actress's and her alter ego's popularity skyrocketed when she became part of daytime TV supercouple Lorie and Lance. But Lance's original portrayer -- "Bold and the Beautiful" star John McCook, who also shares his remembrances of Jeanne in the May 28 "Y&R" tribute -- was but one of Lorie's loves. In the first part of Jaime's "Reimagine That!" interview, she fondly recalls her friendship with actor Tom Selleck, who played Lorie's publisher-turned-paramour Jed Andrews before hitting it big in primetime.

Jaime Lyn also explains the toll the ever-increasing "Y&R" workload took on her -- the show expanded to an hour in 1980 -- leading her to exit the show 1982. In addition, she shares what her then-boyfriend Henry Winkler taught her in dealing with fame and aggressive fans in the 1970s. And she reveals how Leslie Neilsen came to the rescue when one fan became threateningly physical in a Century City high-rise apartment lobby while she took a break from filming the 1975 pilot of the primetime series "S.W.A.T." "This woman came down from having just watched me on ("Y&R")," she recalls. "I'm sitting in this wingback chair, and she came and she grabbed my face in her hand -- so I couldn't move. Because of the wingback, I can't even get up. And she's screaming at me at how horrible I am as Lorie."

Finally, in this first half of her two-part interview, the now-Facebook-savvy Jaime Lyn talks about her brief return last month (see also here and here) as ex-psychiatric patient Dr. Laura Horton in "Days of Our Lives," and discloses just how much the process of filming soaps has changed since she left that series after six seasons in 1999. (She also reprised the role briefly in 2003 and 2010.)

... In our "Reality Reimagined" segment (listen at 50:10), former "Inside Edition" correspondent Stacey Gualandi talks about her true Hollywood stories -- as a hard news reporter, celebrity interviewer and "Match Game 1990" contestant" -- and shares how she reinvented herself as a Vegas-based online media anchor and writer, behind-the-scenes TV producer and now host of the successful Women's Eye radio show. This busy, enterprising woman's star continues to rise.

... And finally, in her "Reawakenings" segment (listen at 1:14:30) our resident dream weaver, Yvonne Ryba, interprets a shopping-mall-centered dream rich with symbols, metaphors and "clues" that led her to expand her horizons and manifest her living dreams in the 1990s.